ABSTRACT
This study was carried out to investigate grapho-syntactic
errors in the language of advertising in Nigeria. The purpose was to find out the
nature, types, and causes of these errors of writing, which included spelling,
punctuation, agreement, omissions and wrong tense usage that occur in the
advertisements in the electronic and print media in Nigeria. The advertising
materials used were inscriptions on hoardings, posters, newspapers, magazines
and motor vehicles. Public announcements on television were also used. The data
were collected from the major cities of Anambra State i.e. Awka, Onitsha and
Nnewi, which represent the major commercial centres that habour more abundantly
sources of these data. Different national newspapers and magazines were
selected on daily bases for a period of three weeks and used for the study.
Unstructured interviews were administered to artisans who had incidences of
such errors on their hoardings. Questionnaire was also administered to
professional advertisers to find out whether they were aware of such errors and
whether these errors served any specific purposes. The findings revealed, among
other things, that grapho-syntactic errors were mostly due to the incomplete
mastery of the English language which is the language of the media in Nigeria;
that the level of education of advertisers correlated with the quantity and
nature of the errors; that some of these errors were caused by interference
from the first language of the advertisers; that some of these forms were
regarded as aspects of Nigerian English; that some advertisers intentionally
used erroneous but popular forms to draw attention of the potential clients.
Finally, teaching of spelling and calligraphy well in, especially, the early
formal education, encouragement of the use of the dictionary, and proper
teaching and learning of grammar had been recommended for the reduction of
these errors.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to
the Study
Advertising is basically a system of disseminating information about specific goods, services or ideas to a
target audience by specified sponsors, through multi-faceted means.
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines advertising
as
The action of calling something (a commodity for sale, a
service offered or desired) to the attention of the public especially by means
of printed or broadcast paid announcements (31).
Thus, advertising implies the techniques and practices used to bring specific products, services and opinions to
public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in
a certain way towards what is advertised. Advertising involves communication and communication
involves language use.
Language is the major means of human communication and interaction. Sapir explains language as
... a purely human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily
produced symbols (8).
Thus, language forms the basis for all forms of human activities and interaction.
Advertising as a
form of human interaction makes use of language and Brook says that “the
words of advertising need to be chosen with care if they are not going to have
ridiculous effects” (167).
In Nigeria, the language of the mass media is essentially
English. This does not mean that our indigenous languages are not used in media
advertising, but English is the main language of the mass media. The English
language is non-indigenous to Nigeria, but it is one of the nation’s official
languages and her lingua-franca.
The establishment of Lagos as a British colony in 1862
officially marked the advent of the English language to Nigeria, but there are
traces of the existence of this language in Nigeria before 1862. With the
arrival of the Europeans in Nigeria for political, economic or religious
conquest, there arose a need for communication between English and Nigerians
from different ethnic groups. The Europeans, according to Omolewa (in Uzoezie),
had a very poor opinion of the vernacular which they considered neither very
extensive nor of very high quality. So, these Europeans decided to use their
own language in communication with Nigerians (163).
The first set of Europeans to arrive at the shores of Nigeria
were Portuguese. They made contacts with some Southern Kingdoms such as old
Calabar and the Empire of Benin, around the seventeenth century. The British
traders were the next batch of Europeans who came to Nigeria. According to
Uzoezie, the British ousted the Portuguese and replaced the contact language
with English as the language of diplomacy and trade (163). Quoting Omolewa
cited in Adetugbo, Uzoezie says that England also acquired the monopoly for
slave trading along the West Coast of Africa by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713
and the subsequent British success in the famous race to Nikki in 1884, and
according to him, the ground was, thus, already prepared for the permeation of
the English language along the coast and the hinterlands. Due to the contacts
between the English language, Portuguese, and some indigenous languages, a form
of inter-language (pidgin) emerged (164).
In 1862, the official annexation of Lagos as a British colony
took place; thus, the British needed manpower badly for running its affairs of
government in Nigeria, and having adopted English as the language it would
utilize in government, they then had to teach the indigenes English in order to
facilitate better interaction, understanding and governance. In 1882, the
English language was adopted as the mode of instruction for training of the
badly needed manpower.
The missionaries who also came to Nigeria to spread the
gospel had to use English. They emphasized the English language as it related
to religion. They introduced reading, arithmetic and writing (the 3 – Rs) to
Nigerians as part of the strategies of conversion. Thus, they enhanced the spread
of the language.
With the abolition of the trans- Atlantic slave trade in
1807, according to Eresimmadu and Arinze, many freed slaves returned to their
native towns and states (17). These slaves had already learnt some English in
their places of slavery. They took up jobs as interpreters and teachers and
helped to spread the English language. Furthermore, according to Udensi and
Ike-Nwafor the desire for a good command of the English language was enhanced
by the certification system of employment, whereby a credit pass in the English
language was made a basic requirement for employment and for further studies
(7). Thus, the English language became the language of government, the mass
media, education, politics and also the lingua-franca of Nigeria. The use of the English language as the official
language, according to Udensi and Ike-Nwafor, created problems for many
Nigerians. These problems appeared in the form of errors in language usage at
all levels – phonological, morphological, syntactic and graphological (8).
These errors came as a result of language contacts between English and the
different mother tongues, the so-called vernacular languages. These languages
are totally unrelated to English; there are a lot of disparities, for instance,
in the phonemic inventories, syllabic structures, spellings and syntax. In
speaking the English language, Nigerians, most times, infuse aspects of their
vernacular languages, which appear as errors.
Thus, the coming together of over two hundred and fifty
linguistic groups into a nation, the expansion of trade, the development of
market economy, among other factors, made it imperative to replace traditional
advertising (the use of town criers) with the modern approach, through English.
1.2 Grapho-Syntactic
Errors in Language Usage
There are four skills in language use. They are listening,
speaking, reading and writing. These skills according to Oniemayin, Medayedu
and Daniel are the stages which any speaker of a language goes through in learning and using the
language. The last two skills are acquired later in life in the process of
formal education while the first two stages are acquired unconsciously by the
child in the process of first language acquisition (15). The last two stages –
reading and writing, pose some difficulties for the learner, as he has to apply
effort to acquire them. These difficulties appear in the form of errors of
syntax, graphology, punctuation, among others. For the purpose of this study,
we will concentrate on grapho-syntactic errors, that is, errors of spelling,
punctuation, agreement, wrong tense and omissions.
Grapho-syntactic errors are basically deviations from the
accepted standards and overall competence in putting the words of a language
together in writing, for example, errors of spelling, punctuation, agreement,
wrong tense and omissions. These errors normally occur in language use and they
are sometimes “conscious errors” and sometimes “unconscious errors”. They are
“conscious errors” when a speaker uses the wrong forms because he considers
them appropriate in the context, and “unconscious errors’ when they occur as a
result of inadequate mastery, carelessness or slips either on the part of the
speaker, writer or the printer. These errors are indexes of the
learner’s difficulties in language use. In some cases, because of the
occurrence of errors, the information is not clearly disseminated to or
understood by the target audience. Deviations in language use are considered
real errors when they are consistent and non-random and as well hinder the
proper decoding process of the information.
1.3 Advertising
Advertising has been defined by many authorities in various
ways to suit many purposes and circumstances. In this study, we looked and
selected definitions of the word, advertising. Gollier’s Encyclopedia states
Advertising is a mass paid communication by means of the
printed word, radio or television aimed at persuading individuals to take a
desired cause of action (136).
Encyclopedia Americana defines it as “any paid form of non-personal
presentation and promotion of products, services or idea by an identifiable
individual or organisation” (195). In the same vein, the Advertising
Practioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), (in Ozo) defines it as “a form of
communication through media about products, services or ideas paid for by an identified sponsor” (1). The Encyclopedia Britannica (Macropaedia)
defines it as “the techniques and practices used to bring products, services,
opinions or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to
respond in a certain way towards what is advertised” (113). Also Bovee and
Arens define advertising as “a non-personal communication of information
usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or
ideas by an identified sponsor through various media” (5). Similarly, Websters
Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says
Advertising is the action of calling something (such as a
commodity for sale, a service offered or desired) to the attention of the
public especially by means of printed or broadcast paid announcement (31).
From the above definitions, we can infer that advertising is
a form of communication about ideas, things, services, events or people, which
is paid for by an individual or organization. The form of communication is not
personal or one-to-one; it is not face-to-face interaction, rather, it is
directed at a particular group of people. Advertising is basically a
communication process involving a transfer of information from the advertiser
to the consumer with a view to getting a subsequent feedback in the form of
buying the good, service or idea that is advertised.
The practice of advertising is as old as man. In Nigeria,
advertising can be traced back a long way to the pre-colonial period. Town
criers were used as a form of advertising technique. Hawking is also a form of
advertising whereby hawkers call out their ware to the public and encourage the
public to buy. People also display their goods in front of their houses to
indicate their availability within their houses. This is also a form of
advertising.
In this study, however, we are concerned with modern
advertising. Modern advertising is a product of literacy and advanced
technology. It is done through specific media. The media make the dissemination
of the advertised information/goods to the audience possible and effective.
Advertising like all forms of communication, involves a flow of messages in a
certain cyclical pattern. Udensi and Ike-Nwafor clearly state the elements of
communication process as “source, message, channel, receiver and feedback” (4).
Source is the advertiser. He encodes his intentions and desires into a message.
This is the advertised information. This information is transmitted through the
media, which is the channel. The receiver is the target audience; the target audience effects
the feedback.
In this research, we are primarily concerned with the
encoding process and in considering this; we look at the message in question.
Thus, all forms of errors in the message are from the source. The channel to be
used in the research are hoardings, posters, radio and television screen, newspapers,
magazines, signposts of artisans – barbers, blacksmiths, native doctors,
traders, schools, hostels, small scale businesses, among others. Inscriptions
on buses, lorries, trucks, general invitation cards or announcements about
weddings, meetings, launchings, deaths/funerals are also going to be included
in the data.
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